{"id":147,"date":"2008-05-30T19:46:03","date_gmt":"2008-05-31T02:46:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.coolkarma.com\/dharma\/?p=147"},"modified":"2009-04-05T13:54:42","modified_gmt":"2009-04-05T20:54:42","slug":"cement-seagulls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.karmabytes.net\/?p=147","title":{"rendered":"Cement Seagulls"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"plovers1\"In Southern California you expect to see a flock of seagulls at the shoreline, but it always puzzles me to find a group of gulls hours inland on the asphalt parking lot of a discount store at sunrise.\u00a0 It puts a definite twist on the early bird special.<\/p>\n

About a mile down the road from us is a small tree lined street that boarded the water treatment plant.\u00a0 My husband and I would frequently stop the car alongside the shrubs until my mind-body was ready to go further down the hill on our way to the office.\u00a0 For us, it was a small piece of nature among an otherwise, over-developed Southern California community.\u00a0 It was not unexpected to see rabbits and scrub jays forage by the greenbelt, but on this summer (before a major construction project would forever alter the unknown preserve) we would take great delight in seeing a small plover raise her off spring.<\/p>\n

Why would a sea creature come into the dirty city?\u00a0 Was it some kind of purgatory penalty?\u00a0 Was the Inland Empire where birds were sentenced to do hard time?\u00a0 And what about those fast-food-sparrows who live and breed at the drive-through?\u00a0 Who would make that choice?<\/p>\n

I have seen Nature provide for all of her creatures.\u00a0 The nectar for the bees, the flora for the bunnies, even the food chain seems to exist in harmony with the ecosystem.\u00a0 So why then do some of us find ourselves on the pavement in a panic?\u00a0 Perhaps when I solve that one for mySelf, I will understand the cement seagulls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Southern California you expect to see a flock of seagulls at the shoreline, but<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[11],"class_list":["post-147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chissa","tag-plovers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karmabytes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karmabytes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karmabytes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karmabytes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karmabytes.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.karmabytes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":520,"href":"https:\/\/www.karmabytes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions\/520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karmabytes.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karmabytes.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karmabytes.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}